Do you remember when you were in gym class and it was dodgeball day? It was possibly the greatest day in class, aside from the use of the square sliding apparatuses. You knew the day was coming all week. You had the day circled on your Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles wall calendar. The date was circled in red with a bright marker. You wouldn’t care about anything else. No other news could compare to the excitement of playing dodgeball or sliding around on what is just short of being labeled as death on wheels. Maybe not death but I am sure many of kids have lost a few fingers while pushing themselves across the room and into each other. It was much more fun to ram each other than to actually race to the other end of the gym.
With each day that passes and each box on the calendar getting marked off, you can hardly contain yourself with exuberance and pure, unadulterated excitement. With the final day here and you’re on your way to the gym, you wonder about how many people you’ll tag out or worse, wonder if you’ll get tagged out seconds into the game. You’ll wonder if maybe you’ll be that kid who they see as an easy target and taking out the weak will make the game more challenging than just toying with you and making you feel that maybe, just maybe, you’re actually good and could hold your ground against the kids who have hit puberty years before you.